Starting Cohort Newborns (SC1)

Version 3.0.0

Date of Release

Summary

The aim of this substudy run by the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS) is to generate a longitudinal cohort starting with infants in their first year of life. Therefore families are visited in their homes from the first wave. Substantial, theory-driven surveys are conducted with the children (as target persons) and their parents as well as with persons in charge outside of the home (group manager of the day nursery or the Kindergarten, childminders; from wave 2). Those data will enable scientists to describe and analyze processes and courses of education as well as competence development.

The main research questions of this substudy of the NEPS include:

How do children in early childhood develop early skills and abilities and in what ways are processes of development and education supported by settings of child care and education within and outside the family?

How do intra-familial and extra-familial settings interact?

From what age of the child do families make use of child care settings and education outside the family and to what extent does this depend on the development of the child and/or on the family background including the intra-familial learning environment, parental needs, and orientations?

In addition, there is a special focus on families with migration background.

In addition, publications using data from this release must include the following acknowledgement:

This paper uses data from the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS): Starting Cohort 1 – Newborns, doi:10.5157/NEPS:SC1:3.0.0. From 2008 to 2013, NEPS data were collected as part of the Framework Programme for the Promotion of Empirical Educational Research funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). As of 2014, the NEPS survey is carried out by the Leibniz Institute for Educational Trajectories (LIfBi) at the University of Bamberg in cooperation with a nationwide network.

Availability

Data and documents are released for academic research. This release is uniquely identified by one DOI. All data sets of this release are available in different languages (English, German), formats (Stata, SPSS), and degrees of anynomization (download, remote access, and on-site).

Documentation

Below you will find detailed additional information regarding the surveys, instruments and data from the Starting Cohort 1, Newborns. This documentation refers to the version 3.0.0. In case of questions, simply contact the Research Data Center.

The survey instruments are made available to you in the form of SUF and field versions. The field versions consist of the originally deployed PAPI questionnaires as well as the programming templates for CATI and CAPI interviews. The SUF versions entail additional information, such as the variable names and labels found in the Scientific Use Files as well as the corresponding scheme options. We recommend the SUF version, when working with the data. The ZIP archive contains all of the documents listed below.

In our Downloadcenter you can also view other survey instruments that don't yet have a published Scientific Use File. In order to access the instruments, logging in to the webstie is required. If you are not registered as a NEPS data user and therefore don't have the necessary login credentials, simply contact the Research Data Center.

Description of the scaling model and information in regard to using data from the competence tests (PDF-en)

Usually for each domain there is a brief description of the construct with sample items, a description of the data, and of the psychometric properties of the test. In the table you will find each of the documents that can be downloaded. (The ZIP archive contains all of the documents listed below. Therein documents in regard to the competence domains as well as overview documents can be found.)

The semantic data structure file is does not contain data. It does, however, contain the metadata found in the Scientific Use Files (e.g., variable names,variable labels and scheme options). It is useful for exploring the data structure without needing any actual data. The ZIP-File contains German and English versions for Stata and SPSS.

This report of weighting and sample stratification includes information regarding the construct principles and sampling process. It also provides insight towards a correct use of the values found in the Scientific Use Files.

Regional structural information can be merged to our data on-site. Regional data is available from Microm. This documentation describes all regional levels, structural characteristics, and how to use the data.

The field reports document the overall data-collection process executed by the survey institute, including the preparation and execution of the survey, the interviewer selection and deployment, tracking and providing incentives to the target persons, the initial contact and the realization of the interviews and tests, etc. The field reports are suppied by the respective survey institutes and are only available in German.

Starting Cohort Early Childhood

Download the Data

Registered users who have signed a data use agreement and are logged in can download the data here. If you are not registered yet, please sign the data use agreement to obtain a user number and a password.

Data Access via RemoteNEPS

Registered users who have signed a data use agreement and are logged in can access RemoteNEPS here. If you are not registered yet, please sign the data use agreement (with RemoteNEPS supplemental agreement) to obtain a user number and a password.

More Information

In addition to the overview on this site, we offer further information about the data from Starting Cohort 1 (Newborns):

Access to the newest data and successively updated documentation for Starting Cohort 1